Day 45 A.M. & P.M.

Mary-Ann Sontag July 10, 2020

The Wildflowers are conspiring to make the farewells slightly less awful. They are doing this by collectively demanding a change to my morning routine, which I find highly objectionable. There are, however, more of them than me — and the Montana Puppy Choir is LOUD.

And so their breakfast has been moved to precede my morning coffee. This is sorely testing my cheerful morning demeanor but luckily, they are cute and I know it is not forever.

On days like this when their meals are raw food, they need to eat individually to reduce the chances of making a mess and having raw food all over their heads. Gross. This individual meal service takes more time, further delaying the morning coffee.

After eating, the puppies head for the playroom (aka Living Room) — and I basically become a Bathroom Attendant at this point in the proceedings, which is not conducive to coffee drinking, FYI.

Eventually they settle down to play and I can feed the big dogs — and finally, make coffee.

It is hard to overstate how all-consuming it is raise a litter of puppies well.

My Fitbit tells me I average only about 6 1/2 hours of sleep per night and I get over 10k steps in a day just moving puppies around. I forget to answer emails (or worse — think I have answered them) and find it hard to concentrate on non-puppy things that need doing.

I am not actually complaining — I knew all this going in, after all.

One of my goals in blogging about this litter is to educate. Not only do I want to share information but I also want people to understand there is a big difference between a breeder who has the litter out in the barn or kennel, and one that pours her/his life into these eight weeks.

I hope it is also clear that it matters. Puppies are not blank slates when they arrive at their new homes — they are complex living creatures whose brains have been developing and getting “wired” for eight weeks.

It hurts my heart to imagine the stressed and/or deprived lives experienced by so many puppies and their mothers. Every puppy deserves to be raised as the Wildflowers have, but I know this is the exception because yes — it is hard and time-consuming.

You — the person looking for a puppy — can help change things.

Please insist on getting a puppy from parents who have ALL the recommended health testing/screening, and require the breeder show evidence of raising litters in intelligent, thoughtful, enriched ways.

Creating life should be done with integrity — and so should acquiring a puppy.

Please have a terrific — and ethical — day!

THIS is a morning video.

THIS is a lunchtime video.

EVENING: PHOTOS and Thoughts from the Day

Every time a puppy has a successful new experience, something marvelous happens in their developing brains.

Therefore, they need constant new experiences to master — not scary and new but doable and new.

As I have said before — what we want when something novel shows up (sprinkler moved to disk) is this…

And that happens when the new experience is appropriate AND the puppy has experience mastering new things.

Daisy has started to play with her babies, and I am reminded that it is normal for dog play to include their mouths…

We cannot really expect a puppy to NOT use her mouth — what we can expect is that she learn to do it gently…

Tonight each puppy had an individual training session. My specific goals were to take them to a new place and reinforce following.

I took each to two new places, put them down and walked away 5 - 6 steps. When they caught up, I gave them a treat (cooked egg) and went the other direction — repeat. If the puppy stayed with me, I reached down and rewarded every 3 - 4 steps.

I made sure to give the treat when the puppy had four feet on the ground — we do not want to inadvertently teach a puppy to jump up, which is what we do when we give treats when their front paws are up on us.

I also did not lure puppies to follow me — the treats were not to create the behavior but rather to reinforce the behavior.

All of the puppies did a great job following, and had no issue with the new places.

Definitely no social distancing at the Milk Bar!

Good Night, Friends!

Blowing Up the Messenger

Mary-Ann Sontag November 10, 2019

It happens every semester - you would think I would be used to it by now.

Students irate when I do my job. Specifically, when I inform them via a grade and comments that their assignment wasn’t actually amazing.

“I always get A’s on my papers.” “Your instructions were not good.” “I am an A student.” “My other professors give me A’s on my papers.” Repeat.

It is hard to hear Unflattering Truth.

I so get it. Truly I do.

If “I am a 4.0 student” understands unflattering feedback as truth, how can he maintain his personal narrative — his very identity — about himself as a student?

He can’t.

And that leaves two options:

It is the professor’s fault (WTH does she know?!); OR,
I have things to learn.

One might say that presence at a university assumes one knows there are things to learn, but apparently not.

Therefore, Option #1 is the logical choice (!).

Huh.

Humans are so interesting.

And now, Dear Reader, please make a slight substitution — after all, this is a blog about Life — with Dogs.

When a dog does not provide the feedback that we are an amazingly awesome trainer/handler/person/everything by turning in an A+ performance, we have two options:

It is the dog’s fault; OR,
I have things to learn.

Yep.

The dog’s performance is your grade as a trainer/handler.

Blame the dog and you never get better.

(Important and Relevant Note: Consider bad grades and other human misadventures as evidence that you have not yet died and therefore are still an imperfect human being living on earth with similarly imperfect human beings [and really amazing dogs]. Given that it was just the 36th Anniversary of my mom’s untimely death at age 45 — allow me to say this about that: Lucky Imperfect You!).

There are, of course, other ways to get a desired grade.

A few years back one student decided the way to get a good grade was to buy a paper from an internet site and submit it as her own — in my ETHICS CLASS.

That did not go well.

Sometimes cheating does result in a good grade on an assignment or canine performance. But then you have to live with the knowledge that you are a fraud, an imposter — and basically just a lousy human being.

But change is possible!

Don’t despair!

You — the collective you including me — CAN be a real A+ student or trainer or human (or preferably — all of those).

How?

Just take the C- this time and embrace Option #2.

You will be transformed.

I promise.

What's the Right Thing to Do?

Mary-Ann Sontag October 20, 2019

Up the road from us, a neighbor built a fully-functioning replica of an old-fashioned Conoco gas station on his property. In doing do, the neighbor created this view for others in our rural, single-family dwelling kind of neighborhood.

This would never happen in places with strict zoning laws — but Montana prides itself on not being a “Nanny State.”

Apparently Live and Let Live means enjoying your individual freedom while your neighbor enjoys their Conoco gas station.

The tension between the rights of individuals to pursue happiness when there are different views of happiness is tough.

Someone said something to the effect that your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins (source not established).

This is helpful — until we consider what constitutes our metaphorical noses.

Is my nose assaulted by the placement of a replica gas station into my mountain view? I do not think so but another neighbor was so affronted by the gas station that they planted a little forest to block the view.

Do I have a bloodied nose if workplace policies and procedures are disregarded? If someone cheats at a dog show? If someone takes unauthorized funds and/or services from a club or other voluntary organization to which I have a fiduciary responsibility?

And even tougher — is a broken nose sometimes the lesser of two evils?

Some people are really good at taking blows, taping up that nose to preserve relationships or avoid general unpleasantness.

I am not.

I do think I am better at pausing and thinking things through, contemplating that impossible balancing act between an individual’s right to make unfortunate choices and my responsibility to the Greater Good, whatever that happens to be (if anything).

The truth is that sometimes it is not our business, even if the decision of another distresses us.